Inspirational Quotes by Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

Inspirational Quotations by Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

Blaise Pascal (1623–62) was a French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher, and master of prose. Later a Jansenist scholar, he wrote two classics of French devotional thought, the Lettres Provinciales 1656–57,) directed against the casuistry of the Jesuits, and Pensées (1670,) a defense of Christianity.

Born in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Pascal was the son of a venerated mathematician and a local bureaucrat. Early in life, Pascal proved that he was a prodigy by discovering Euclid’s first 23 propositions for himself at the age of 11. Pascal’s work contains his famous theorem on a hexagram inscribed in a conic.

While only 17, Pascal published an essay on mathematics that René Descartes refused to recognize as being the work of a teen. Pascal produced (1642–44) a calculating device to aid his father in his local administration; Gottfried Leibniz later simplified it.

With Pierre de Fermat, Pascal laid the foundations of the mathematical system of probability. He also contributed to calculus and hydrodynamics, devising Pascal’s Law in 1647. He developed the hydraulic press, the barometer, and the syringe and published his work on vacuums in 1647. The SI unit of pressure is named after him.

In 1646, Pascal converted to Jansenism, and religion became progressively dominant in his life, culminating in him joining the Jansenist retreat at Port-royal Des Champs in 1655. There, Pascal disseminated a religious doctrine that clarified the experience of God through the heart instead of through reason. The establishment of his belief of intuitionism had a bearing on such later philosophers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Henri Bergson and on the Existentialists.

Pascal’s notes for a casebook of Christian truths were found after his death and published as the Pensées in 1669. They contain intense perceptions of religious truths coupled with a suspicion of rationalist thought and theology.

Notable biographies of Pascal include Jean Mesnard’s Pascal: His Life and Works (1951; trans. 1952) and Ernest Mortimer’s Blaise Pascal: The Life and Work of a Realist (1959.)

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Blaise Pascal

In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.
—Blaise Pascal

I do not admire a virtue like valour when it is pushed to excess, if I do not see at the same time the excess of the opposite virtue, as one does in Epaminondas, who displayed extreme valour and extreme benevolence. For otherwise it is not an ascent, but a fall. We do not display our greatness by placing ourselves at one extremity, but rather by being at both at the same time, and filling up the whole of the space between them.
—Blaise Pascal

The mind naturally makes progress, and the will naturally clings to objects, so that for want of right objects, it will attach itself to wrong ones.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Progress

The last act is bloody, however fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is finished forever.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Death

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: God, Belief, Religion

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Names

Force is the queen of the world and not opinion; but opinion is that which makes use of force.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Opinions

Do you wish people to think well of you?. Don’t speak well of yourself.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Speakers, Speaking

All the troubles of life come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for awhile each day in our rooms.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Prayer, Meditation

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Truth

The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Reason

We are only falsehood, duplicity, contradiction; we both conceal and disguise ourselves from ourselves.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Self-Discovery, Conflict

Some vices only lay hold of us by means of others, and these, like branches, fall on removal of the trunk.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Vice

It is the heart which experiences God, not the reason.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Instincts, Belief, Faith, God, Divinity

Through space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; through thought I comprehend the world.
—Blaise Pascal

The gospel to me is simply irresistible.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: The Bible

Kind words do not cost much. Yet they accomplish much.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Words, Kindness

Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Water

The multitude which does not reduce itself to unity is confusion; the unity which does not depend upon the multitude, is tyranny.
—Blaise Pascal

Faith affirms many things respecting which the senses are silent, but nothing which they deny.—It is superior to their testimony, but never opposed to it.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Faith

The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinarjr exertions, but by his everyday conduct.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Virtue

The weakness of human reason appears more evidently in those who know it not, than in those who know it.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Reason

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Fame

Everyone, without exception, is searching for happiness.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Happiness

We must learn our limits. We are all something but none of us are everything.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Possibilities, Potential

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?
—Blaise Pascal

There are two peculiarities in the truths of religion: a divine beauty which renders them lovely, and a holy majesty which makes them venerable.—And there are two peculiarities in errors: an impiety which renders them horrible, and an impertinence which renders them ridiculous.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Truth

Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master,—the root, the branch, the fruits,—the principles, the consequences.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Nature

We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart, and it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The skeptics who desire truth alone labor in vain.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Reason, Truth

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Goodwill, Kindness, Helpfulness, Happiness

Great and small suffer the same mishaps.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Reality, Opportunities

The multitude which is not brought to act as unity, is confusion. That unity which has not its origin in the multitude is tyranny.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Unity, Conscience

St. Augustine teaches that there is in each man a Serpent, an Eve, and an Adam. Our senses and natural propensities are the Serpent; the excitable desire is Eve; and the reason is the Adam. Our nature tempts us perpetually; criminal desire is often excited; but sin is not completed till reason consents.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Temptation

Grace is indeed required to turn a man into a saint; and he who doubts this does not know what either a man or a saint is.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Kindness

Brave deeds are most estimable when hidden.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Posterity, Goodness, Good Deeds, Deeds

Faith is a sounder guide than reason. Reason can go only so far, but faith has no limits.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Faith, Belief

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Feelings

We only consult the ear because the heart is wanting.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Listening

Two things control men’s nature: instinct and experience.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Experience

There are people who lie simply for the sake of lying.
—Blaise Pascal
Topics: Lying